Seats disappearing on Muni — in more ways than one

You may want to sit down after you read this, and if you’re on Muni, you may not be able to.

Yes, we know that it’s long been difficult to find a seat on Muni. But it could be getting tougher in a couple of ways.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the large decals on the first row of forward-facing fold-down seats near the front of Muni buses that no longer fold down.

“This seat has been disabled for safety reasons,” the white-on-black stickers read in English, Spanish and Chinese. “Please do not sit here.”

Muni began locking the seats in the folded-up position about a month ago, gradually working its way through its fleet, to comply with safety warnings from a number of bus manufacturers. The bus-builders warn that because those seats have no barrier in front of them — the back of another seat, a wall or partition — people sitting in them could be pitched forward when the bus stops suddenly.

Muni considered installing barriers but decided they would obstruct access to the wheelchair tie-down areas. So, instead, the seats have been secured in the flipped-up position.

The good news is that Muni is replacing its entire bus fleet and the new buses will have new seating configurations that eliminate the problem. But it will take four to five years before all of the older buses with the flip-down seats are replaced.

Muni expects to have all the flip-down seats permanently flipped up by mid-June, said Paul Rose, spokesman for the Municipal Transportation Agency.

The second seat-stealer is intentional. A couple of weeks ago, at the request of Supervisors Scott Wiener and London Breed, Muni took one of its Metro cars and ripped out seven seats, replacing 14 double-wides with seven single seats as part of an experiment.

The idea is to create more capacity on often-crowded Muni Metro trains since about two people can stand on the space taken up by a single seat. During commute hours, Metro trains are sometimes so crowded they have to pass stops without picking up passengers.

The MTA is running the reduced-seat car, coupled with a regularly configured car, on the N-Judah line through Thursday. Then it will travel the L-Taraval line until June 13. Muni officials will evaluate comments from the public before deciding whether to remove seats from more cars.